Recife, second only to Brasília, is owed to Juscelino Kubitschek. As the first slave port in the Americas, Recife has long been reliant on its crop of sugarcane to fuel its struggling economy.

President Kubitschek, recognizing the Northeast's economic underdevelopment, established in 1959 the Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast to transform the region into a modern hub of industrial development, with Recife at the initiative's center.

However, it has fallen short of its transformative goals. More than sixty percent of Northeasterners, of whom thirty-five percent live in extreme poverty, earn less than Brazil's minimum wage. For over a million people, life in Recife, though getting better slowly, is still hard.